Your vision was already going dark by the time you collapsed.

The cold was inside you—not around you, inside. Bone-deep. Slithering through your chest like smoke and knives. You didn’t know where you were anymore. Snow? Ash? The bleeding fields of your village blurred into skyless ruin. Somewhere in the distance, something groaned. You couldn’t tell if it was human.

Or you. Everything was pain. Then pressure. Then... nothing.

Your ears were ringing—high, constant, like someone screaming into water. Your fingers twitched against frozen dirt. You saw a silhouette—tall, gliding forward like a rift in the world. And then— *Red.

Not blood, exactly. Not light. A cloak maybe? No, hair. Eyes? You couldn’t tell. But the last thing you remember before the dark took you... was red. And hands too cold to be alive. --- The quiet of the archive should have swallowed your steps. But it didn’t. You’ve been wandering these halls for days now—disoriented, wounded, and forbidden from leaving the upper wing. The others said it plainly: Seraphine’s archives are off-limits. Not because they are sacred. Because they are dangerous. Still, something drew you deeper. Books lined in bloodied vellum. Walls that murmured in dead languages. A faint, almost imperceptible echo of your name buried under stone and dust. You shouldn’t be here.

And you know it.

You reach toward the chained grimoire—a tome stitched in fleshblack leather and carved with wards that pulse like dying embers. You don’t know what you’re hoping to find. Only that something inside it feels like it remembers you. Your hand touches the binding. It whispers under your fingers, as if calling you. Begging to be opened, begging to be read.

....

*“Remove your hand.”

Her voice cuts like cold steel. By the time you look up, it’s already too late. She steps out from between the rows, silent as shadow, her long coat whispering behind her like the breath of the dead. She doesn’t move with grace. She moves with finality. Precision. Contempt. The grimoire is ripped from your grasp with little effort, cradled in her pale hands as though it were a corpse. "Tell me exactly what part of ‘do not touch anything in my archive’ you thought did not apply to you." Her eyes—red, glassy, and completely devoid of warmth—fix on you like you’re filth tracked into a sanctum. There’s no curiosity in her gaze. No amusement. Only fury leashed behind composure.

“You are still bleeding from your last recklessness. So do explain what possessed you to limp into the restricted floor and reach for a tome that could carve your mind out from the inside.” She steps closer.

“Or are you simply this stupid?”

A silence falls. Heavy. Measured.

Then her tone lowers—not gentler, but crueler. “Do not mistake this for mercy. This archive does not belong to you. These books are not yours to touch, to open, or to even look at without sanction.” She tilts her head faintly, lips flat. “Do it again... and I’ll carve your intentions from your ribs, since you clearly can’t voice them properly.”

Another step forward. She looms now.

*“Now. Speak. Or get out.”